A Thousand Years (Asgard Shorts series 6)
by LadyLorena
Summary: Grace has been living in Asgard for a milennium. Part of the sequence of one shots that follow The Best of Both Worlds.


The anniversary of Grace Stark's arrival in Asgard was yet again approaching, but this year was different, a landmark. She had been there a thousand years.

Of course, Loki took this occassion to ask her what she had not yet done that she would like to try and she named two things- she wanted to learn to fly and she wanted to play baseball. He chose the easier to attempt first.

Grace stood beside the hovering vehicle and poked it, "So this thing goes out over the water still works?"

"Of course. I've taken it out many times myself. Did Thor never recount our splendid entry into Svartalfheim to avenge the death of our mother? It involved daring feats of flight, punching each other repeatedly in mid flight, and Thor throwing me off Malekith's ship onto one of these that Fandral was piloting."

"Let me guess, you had no clue what the hell was going on when he did."

"Precisely."

"You're sure I'm not going to fall off this and die?"

He offered her a hand, "My love, after a millenium together, I would be utterly bereft were you parted from me. I will not let you fall."

She accepted and stepped up onto the skiff, "So how do you do this? Magic? Technology? Incredible skill?"

"The latter two. No magic. Just flight. You stand here and hold these-"

"I'm not flying this thing. I'll crash us into a bridge or something."

He smiled, "Do not worry, my dear Miss Grace. I will be right here with you." He stood close behind her, his hands over hers as he showed her how to start the engines and steadied her as the rising vehicle caught her off guard. He gently positioned her body for better balance and then, his hands over hers, slowly moved the vessel forward, backward, and to each side. Then he taught her how to change elevation. She was incredibly nervous when he asked her if she was ready to take it out over the water and at some speed, but she nodded and took a deep breath.

She was mildly terrified as he accellerated and wove their course out to small islands and around other craft on the air and sky. He tightened their corners and, once he felt her gaining a bit of confidence, he asked her if she was ready for more daring ventures. She nodded, but reminded him she did not like sudden drops or anything going up-side down. He deftly wove through the bridges, cornered quickly, and curved close to the small rocky island that contained passages to other realms. He took her farther out from land and offered her the chance to control their flight and cautiously she navigated over the open water, cheering each time she did something without having to be reminded how. He stepped back and asked her to take them closer to shore and while she did, she also insisted that there was nothing he could do to convince her to fly it over land where she could crash on someone's house. He took back the controls and set the craft down where they had begun.

Grace's legs were trembling a little as he lifted her down, "Gracie, you shake."

"Yeah, a little...but that was so much fun! Can we do it again?"

Laughing, he kissed her cheek, "Of course! But first, I believe we have to recruit a baseball team."

It took them a few weeks to round up enough players for two teams, but some of the guards and stable boys were curious about this new sport and Grace convinced some of the laundry girls to give it a shot. One of the maids from the kitchen brought her three brothers to play and soon they had eighteen people ready to learn baseball. During the weeks of recruitment, Thor commissioned bats and balls made, and found a leatherworker willing to make gloves. He also put the armoury to work making catcher's masks, batting helmets, and padding.

It was a bright sunny day when everyone gathered on a baseball diamond Grace had carefully laid out on one of the training grounds, "Alright, everybody, here's the basics of baseball. Somebody stands here with a bat. Somebody else stands there and throws a ball at the batter. The batter tries to hit it. If the batter does, everybody else tries to get the ball back to the batter to tag him out while he runs around these bases. The batter stops on the closest base to be safe and not tagged when the ball gets close. And if the batter crosses home plate, that team scores. We'll start out just practicing batting and pitching in pairs, though, and then we'll walk through how this whole deal works."

It took them the better part of the month to learn the very basics of the sport, but by the end of that month, they were willing to play a very sloppy first game with a few friends as their spectators. Other palace staff started to take interest and their second game had a slightly larger crowd. By the end of three months, there were enough other interested people that Grace had another two teams of players to teach. She left Loki in charge of her first two and started from scratch. It was not long before there were yet two more teams worth of new players and so she handed her second set of teams off to Thor and started teaching once again. Seven months in, she organised a schedule of games and the six teams played in rotation on an open field for the general public to see. The attendence grew quickly and grandstands were constructed around the park. Asgard was starved for sports, it seemed, that were not simply war games. Her six teams were quite popular and she quickly found many others clambering to learn how to play. She handed her pair of teams off to Sif to manage. Her players had to also learn to be teachers, she decided, and she set up a series of baseball clinics so the game could spread througout the realm.

The year was coming to a close when the last of these clinics was over and there were rumours of teams springing up to play informal games all through the city. Grace sat with Thor, Loki, and Sif on the balcony overlooking teams practice on their first field on the training grounds. She sipped an iced tea and hummed a few bars of _Take Me Out to the Ball Game_, which had only somewhat caught on (Thor thought it must have been the Nelly Kelly verse that made it hard for Asgard to accept it), but still made her happy.

"So, Grace, have you heard what your detractors have started calling this new sport?" Thor asked, grinning.

"Something entirely ridiculous? You're smiling way too much for it to be something serious. It's got to be nice and weird."

Thor shook his head, "Graceball."

She nearly spit out her tea, laughing, "That's the best they could come up with? Oh my god, that's awesome. Graceball. I love it. They thought that'd be an insult?"

"Apparently. Loki heard it, too. One of the members of court who is less than fond of you was speaking to the woman in grey and called it such. I had to move quickly past to keep from laughing as I did not want to cause dissent in the court."

Sif just rolled her eyes, "Well this one-" she punched Loki playfully in the arm, "-started sniggering as soon as he heard it. He could hardly contain himself and little good it did you to run out of the room, leaving him behind."

"I could not help it, Sif, it was simply too funny! It's not my fault your husband fled to the hallway to avoid being caught."

"No doubt the next meeting of the council will be tense, thanks to the both of you."

"Eh, don't worry, Sif. They may not like my imported ancient Midgardian sport, but we _have_ done something with it that never caught on there."

"And what might that be?"

"We let women play and have an integrated league. Earth never really got around to it."

Sif's eyes grew wide, "Never? But the song you sing- is it not about a woman's love of the game? Nelly Kelly?"

"Yeah, but only as a spectator. Not as a player. So remind the court that Graceball's got that going for it more than just plain ol' baseball. A happy populace is a good thing and I don't see the council introducing anything new."

Loki wrapped his arms around her shoulders, "Ah, Gracie, ever keenly aware of the mood of our Asgard's people."

Thor smiled, "I do believe these thousand years have been all the easier thanks to it. In a week, the year closes and we begin the next year. We should feast."

Loki kissed her cheek, "Ah, yes. A feast. Leave this one to me."

When the final day of her thousanth year arrived, Grace was not entirely sure what to expect. Loki simply did not plan feasts. He hated them, he hated the court, and he bored easily of the same dishes served at every celebration. He disappeared early in the morning and returned for a quiet lunch in the gardens. His mind wandered as he sat across from his beloved, remembering the day he had carried her into the realm to stay. She had been so frail, her 86 year old body light in his arms as they traversed the Bifrost with her belongings in tow. He recalled landing, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow, and he unable to wake her. He remembered desperation as he brought her to the palace, pushing his horse as fast as he dared while clutching her to his chest. And loss. He felt the deep sense of loss when the spell he had worked so hard to find and decode had intially done nothing. But most of all, he relived the relief he felt when she and Thor were finally able to break through his grief to tell him it had worked; she lived. These memories were a part of every anniversary of her arrival, but on this day, they were sharper, even stinging, as he paused throughout lunch and the hours they dallied in the garden. Each time Grace found him lost in his thoughts, she took his hand and simply waited for him to come back to the present.

When Grace led Loki back into the palace, the sunlight had started to fade and it was nearly time for dinner. They ran into Sif on the way to the great hall and she told them to come with her instead. The feast tonight would be smaller- a celebration for family, not one that they spoiled with the gossip of the court. She thought Loki would be relieved and was happy to see him smiling, stealing glances at her as they walked to a smaller hall that was only ever used by the royal family. She knew he was up to something.

The room was warm and inviting, a cozy fire in the large fireplace on one end of the room, the round table laden with covered dishes on silver platters, fine china at the place settings. Thor and Odin were already seated, a few servants nearby waiting to pour drinks and reveal just what was causing the room to smell so absolutley fabulous. Grace detected garlic, oregano, basil, and tomato and wondered what to expect. The cooks had embraced the cookbooks she had brought with her, eager for new dishes and to please the princes. Asgard had never head of pasta when she arrived and the substitutions the cooks devised to make Midgardian dishes their way were often ones that Grace would have never considered.

Thor boomed a welcome, his enthusiasm infectious; Sif settled behind him as the servants stepped forward to uncover the dishes, "Behold, a feast fit for our dear sister!"

Grace's hands flew to her lips in surprise as the lids were lifted to reveal golden pizzas, bowls of pasta with alfredo sauce or red sauce, her beloved ravioli, fish seared on small cedar planks, tureens of steaming alphabet soup, and a variety of different salads, "Oh my god, this is fucking amazing! It all actually looks like it did back on Earth!" She was giddy as the servants dished up a little of everything for her. They quietly left the room.

Odin raised his goblet, "To Grace- I could not have hoped for my youngest to find a more suited companion, nor could I have ever hoped to imagine the many ways you came to change our realm for the better. May you have many more years ahead of you."

Grace was so happy that immediately after the toast, she hugged him. Odin was mildly surprised, but laughed along with her, a milennium of time far more than enough for him to adapt to her.

Dinner was lively, Thor and Loki passing the bread rolls by tossing them across the table to one another. Grace taught Sif to slurp spaghetti and then started spelling things with her soup noodles that, when Loki noticed just what they said, caused him to blush and laugh, but never to explain what she was spelling to anyone else at the table.

Thor made loud his declaration of a new favourite food, "This fish is a gift from the universe, possibly a divine thing in itself. Especially when it has been sitting in alfredo sauce. We must introduce this to the populace!"

Loki shook his head, "Brother, the populace would not be able to find the cedar planks to make such a dish. It took me quite an effort to secure them, as they are not so plentiful in Midgard."

Grace raised an eyebrow, "How did you get them, anyway? It's not like cedar trees are growing a whole lot these days."

"Ah...well, it included a bit of thievery, but the one from whom it was theft will not notice."

"Do I want to know what that means?"

"Well, he's dead, but not by my hand. The museum was cleaning out its archives and they had a broken trunk set aside with other pieces to be disposed of. I simply salvaged it from an untimely fate- the owner's name was printed in it, and a year- 1975. He is long dead. The trunk was beyond repair- the use of the wood to celebrate your coming from Midgard seemed appropriate."

"You're sweet. I was worried you'd stolen some guy's coffin."

"Not even I am so depraved."

She nudged him, "Awwww, you know you'd do it for me. Tasty formeldahyde... I wonder if they do that anymore."

"When I was visiting I did not think to ask about the funeral practices of modern Midgard."

"Well next time we visit, we're going to have to play the creepy morbid foreign couple and ask really awkward questions. It'll be fun!"

Loki laughed and draped his arm around her shoulder, "Only you, my dear Miss Grace, would find such a thing fun."

"Face it, honey, you think it sounds like a great idea, too. You're just as curious as I am."

That, of course, spurred on a discussion of all the things that those around the table wanted to know about Midgard as it was, having not been there for any length of time in many centuries. Grace had stopped visiting the Stark graves years ago when, the cemetery long forgotten, the city had decided that the plot of land was far more valuable for buildings and the names on the stones they uncovered under the layers of city filth were long since unknown. Grace had, in the dead of night, arrived and retreaved the headstones for both the Starks and the Avengers. They had, ever since, had a place of honour in the palace gardens beside a memorial to the All-Mother. Having not visited regularly since, there were many things about Midgard that had changed without their knowing.

Tired after this game, Grace and Loki retired at the same time Odin did. They were quiet on the way back to their chambers.

When Loki held the door for open for her, he knew she would stop in the doorway in surprise before entering. The scene had played out in his mind so many times as he sought to orchestrate everything perfectly for the end of her thousandth year.

The room was lit with candles placed strategically around the room so their light glinted off the gold and silver woven in the room's tapestries, glittering off inlayed mirrors and the filgree that traced around the ceiling. Their small breakfast table was set with a pair of silver candlesticks, a covered dish between them, two place settings waiting. He clicked the door shut behind her as she stepped towards the table, still in a state of wonder from the lights and the shimmering room. When she seemed still a bit too stunned to move forward, he gently guided her to the table and pulled out a chair for her.

"My love, we have had a delightful milennium together. And I hope for at least two more, but whatever fate grants us, I shall be grateful for. As this day comes to a close, I wanted to celebrate simply- and together." He lifted the cover from the dish and revealed a chocolate cake, "Shall we?"

"You found chocolate? I thought that the plant was extinct..."

"You loved it so that I found seeds and have had it cultivated here for years, drying it for storage and stocking it in the vaults. You shall have chocolate as long as you live, and it seems that it grows well here, so it will be our gift to Asgard."

"You grew me chocolate?"

"Indeed. Does this surprise you?"

Grace started laughing, gleeful, "Yes! Oh hell, yes! I want to see the chocolate fields- but not tonight. Tonight is for cake. And candles. And snuggles."

"I have delighted in preparing this day for you. And possibly discovered a new hobby in the process. Your cookbooks were quite helpful in learning to make noodles."

She eagerly tasted the first bite of her cake and her face melted into a blissful smile, "Fuck, this is good...and did you say noodles?" Things clicked in her mind, "You made dinner? All of it?"

"Yes. For you, my dear."

"I'm pretty sure calling you a flatterer or a flirt is far too mild for all this amazing. You are one hell of a catch, Loki. Even when I want to strangle you."

He blushed, "Ah, well, thank you."

They finished the cake and then sat quietly together by the windows looking out at the stars. When they snuggled into bed, they were both exhausted and happy, looking forward to the years ahead.


End file.
